Module Background

• This module was suggested first by a trip to Savannah, Georgia (with its rich pirate history) and the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. "Suggested" is the proper word here because there is no sense in which professonal and corporate codes of ethics serve merely as guidelines for members interested in loopholes for unprofessional behavior.
• This module has also been developed in response to a common objection to teaching codes of ethics in Practical and Professional Ethics classes. If students tend to treat codes as infallible authorities, then having them begin with an obviously flawed code can do much to overcome this tendency and cultivate in them a questioning, critical attitude toward codes.
• For this reason, John Ladd's influential objections to codes of ethics form an important part of this module. Can codes be written, interpreted, and used to avoid his criticisms and pitfalls?

Uses of the Pirate Code Module

1. Engineering Ethics: This activity has been used for four years in courses at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez in engineering ethics. Students study the pirate code, develop their own codes, and compare both to professional codes in engineering.
2. Business Administration Faculty Workshops: This activity has also been used in faculty workshops to help participants develop their own codes of ethics for accreditation purposes. (For example, AACSB accreditation.) The Pirate Code activity helps to moderate through humor what can be a very difficult and divisive process.
3. Workshops in Ethics for High School Teachers: This activity has also been used in workshops with teachers in public schools to suggest an interesting classroom activity. In particular, it played a part in a workshop sponsored by the Puerto Rican Humanities Foundation held in the summer of 2005.
4. Humanities Classes: In a creative variation on a theme, Professor Dana Collins of UPRM uses the pirate code to introduce Humanities students to an exercise where they write codes from the point of view of classical authors in the Humanities such as Machiavelli. This variation promotes the study of the Humanities tradition as well as provides students with an opportunity to practice critical thinking.
5. Business Ethics Classes: This activity has been incorporated into a new module, "Developing a Statement of Values," (m14319) for classes in Business Ethics. The new point in this variation is to use the code to help students distinguish between compliance and values-based approaches to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

Learning Objectives

• Corporate Governance:This module addresses the AACSB criteria of corporate governance by acquainting students with different elements of codes of ethics which form essential components of corporate ethics compliance programs.
• Ethical Awareness: Studying the Pirate Code and Codes of Ethics help make students aware of ethical issues in practical and professional practice.
• Ethical Integration: This module gives students practice in integrating ethical value into practice by seeing how codes address these issues and by addressing issues themselves as they develop their own codes.
• Ethical Prevention: This module shows students how codes are constructed to anticipate and prevent ethical issues and problems from arising.
• Ethical Leadership: This module helps student practice leadership by having them take the position of ethics compliance officers in charge of developing, disseminating, and implementing a code as part of an overall corporate ethics program.
• Social Responsibility: This module can be taught to give students an idea of gaps in the manner in which codes of ethics address social responsibility issues and how these gaps can be filled.

This module employs the following pedagogical strategies:

1. Informal Writing: Students can prepare for this activity by reading the Pirate Credo and writing out a response to exercise 1.
2. General Class Discussion: The class can, as a whole, react to and discuss the pirate credo. For more information on how to lead class discussions, consult Computing Cases. (See link above.)
3. Cooperative Learning: Students form small groups to write codes, statements of values, and to discuss existing practical and professional codes. Groups that write codes debrief on them to the class and react, as groups, to the debriefing of other groups.
4. Eliciting Knowledge: Instructors can use student reactions to the pirate credo to show students that codes serve different functions, embody values, and send different messages to different constituents. They can also underline general points about the structures of codes as these are characterized in the student codes. In this way, knowledge is elicited from the activities of the students.
5. Pre-Module Skills: Students need some understanding of ethical theory in order to be able to criticize the Pirate Credo and existing practical and professional codes.
6. Module Debriefing: An effective way for an instructor to debrief students on this module is to have them look at existing professional codes such as the code of the Puerto Rico State Society of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Material is provided in the student module to facilitate this reflection. By coming to a code of ethics after having discussed the pirate credo and have written their own, student are less likely to take everything on faith.
7. Practice Critical Thinking: Summaries of criticisms of codes are provided in the module to help encourage students to think critically about codes, most especially their own codes. Having them write codes also clues them into possibilities for revising existing codes.

Pedagogical Comments

• The key to this module is to take the instructor off the stage and put the students in her place by using different strategies of active learning. The primary objection to teaching codes is that they deprive moral agents of moral autonomy. The response is to have students confront codes in the active mode. This module achieves this objective by having students view a bad code and then write their own. Armed with this critical apparatus, then--and only then--do they confront existing practical and professional codes.
• The other item of note with this module is the possibility of variations on a theme. This module has already been put to several uses such as classes in ethics, faculty workshops, and humanities classes. The key to understanding and grouping these variations is recognizing that this activity can be moulded around different learning objectives such as developing skills in conflict resolution (in faculty workshops), understanding key components of codes (in ethics classes), and practicing critical thinking (in high school and Humanities classes).